Ok, I gotta ask, Bob: Have you ever been, say, Skydiving? Hang-gliding? Hot Air Ballooning, maybe? Or any of those activities that're the closest you can get to the feeling of flight a jet pack would provide today unless you work for NASA, who I believe have had then for decades? I'm not trying to be confrontational here, I genuinely want to know. Because I know that, as cool as a jet pack sounds in theory, the moment I found myself strapped to one, I wouldn't be thinking "Oh cool, a jet pack!" I'd be thinking "ohmygodohmygodohmygodimgonnadieimgonnadieimgonnadie..."

Does spending all your time in completely a barren, artic desert with nothing to eat but the freeze-dried food you brought with you and virtually no communication with the rest of civilization (and you have to stay for 5 years) sound like fun to you? Because that's what going to Mars would be like. And let me tell you, that does not sound like fun to me. I suspect the novelty would ware off in about 15 minutes or so, assuming it survived the 2 year trip there.

And that pretty much goes for everywhere else too. Except for our tiny little blue spec, the universe is full of dead, barren worlds that aren't worth visiting for anything much more than sight seeing. And relativity makes that sound less than enjoyable.

If you really want to visit other planets so much, visit the Nevada flat lands some time and you'll get more-or-less the same experience.

Interestingly, it looks like this might have happened a little already. A few years ago, I had an internship at Marshall Space Flight Center, right after the Constellation Program started. There was a lot of R&D going on around returning to the Moon and setting up a Moon Base.

What amused me to no end was one of the official reasons for returning to the Moon: to search for exploitable resources. Now, the Moon has no fossil fuels at all and no minerals not readily available on Earth (since the Moon is essentially a fragment of the Earth). Whoever wrote that into the official statements was desperately hoping for a nice blank check from ol' George ("Yes sir, you heard me right... it's like a petroleum waterbed! Well, if you insist on adding a few more zeros into our budget, I suppose I can't say no...).

Sadly, it looks like somebody let it slip to Obama that the Moon is nothing but a ball of iron coated in dirt.

You honestly believe that the general public does not understand how much it currently cost to get so much as a brick into low earth orbit?

Guess what: it takes a lot of fuel. And it takes a lot of fuel to carry that lot of fuel. Even the simplest of simpletons can see the disproportionate gas tank:cargo ratio of any modern rocket and understand moving anything to the ISS, let alone mars, is stupid expensive, and moving something that REFINED is well under 4 bucks a gallon from mars to here would be absurd.

Long time fan of your show. I am a graduate student in science (chemistry), and I'm sorry to say that unfortunately, pretty much all of these things that you mentioned actually fall under the jurisdiction of engineering, and not science. This may seem like a petty semantics issue, but I think it's slightly more than that. The science for everything you mentioned is mostly there. That's why there are people actually working on growing food and making prototype jetpacks - without the scientists, the fundamental laws behind that would not be possible. However, scientists themselves rarely do the implementation of such things, and even those that do rarely do so on the scale required for mass production. The people who actually do such things are usually the more-practical engineers. Now, I think this is significant because there are more lucrative engineering fields than others - chemical engineers working oil fields come to mind - and as there is significantly more risk to developing a technology with no immediate return (space travel stuff, tiny bears, etc.), I believe that it is far easier to go into a field or research that has far less risk and higher short-term yield.

For any engineers here, I know that I'm overgeneralizing; there are definitely a lot of engineers for which this may not be true. (But I think on the whole it is.)

I believe this webcomic summarizes the difference between scientists and engineers best: http://www.neatorama.com/2009/01/01/mad-scientists-are-actually-just-mad-engineers/

Oh, so Bob was supposed to be funny in this one? No wonder why it SUCKED! Seriously, Bob is one of the worst Internet comedians out there... And I've seen some terrible shit...

Also, I kind of got that he was trying to be funny with this one, but at the same time, given how he said he wanted to go to space in a previous episode, I feel justified in taking at least some of what he said seriously.

I don't think the space program is a waste... I don't think even sending scientific expeditions into space is a waste (though I do think rovers do a better job and don't have any of those pesky biological needs).

It's the scifi fantasy that anyone would ever want to go to space for anything other than ill-advised vacationing much less actually live out there that's completely absurd.

Hey Moviebob, I notice you happened to forget that it was during the current presendency that Nasa's funding cut skewered and our beloved space program proper fucked.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush wanted to go to Mars. Seems to me if you wanted extensive space travel, you didn't support the right guy.

Here's what Bush said about our future in space: "We do not know where this journey will end, yet we know this -- human beings are headed into the cosmos. Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea. We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit." (Source: CNN)

But don't let my inconvenient truth get in the way of sheer blind hatred. By all means, continue, but you ain't getting to Mars that way things are now.

Sorry Bob, but your point about jetpacks is instantly skewered by your second: You're a big fat guy.

Sorry, I don't mean to be offensive, I'm overweight me own self, so this applies to me to, but someone who is on the heavy side would be really hard to make and harder to use. I mean, it's already going to be tough to make it large enough to support human weight, and you'd probably train for weeks, if not months, to use. But it'd be far easier for someone of say, Christian Bale in the Machinist's weight to use then for someone of your or my weight.

"Hey Moviebob, I notice you happened to forget that it was during the current presendency that Nasa's funding cut skewered and our beloved space program proper fucked."

Oh yeah; it was Obama being very very nasty and has nothing to do with the fact that the ESA is doing a better job than Nasa with a budget four times smaller.

There's a joke about the US space program: You know who won the space race between the US and the USSR? France won the race.

Then again, anyone stupid enough to believe Junior was a visionary is cognitively incapable of using a keyboard: since your obviously able to use a keyboard, that put at least half the content of your regular rants in the phony bin, so it's very possible that your apparent misplaced indignation is fake as well.

unlike some other posters, i thought this was interesting and funny enough to be worth coming here to say my (mostly already said by others) piece. though, i think my reasoning is different.

cultured meat is much more expensive than a bunch of cows with immune systems that look after themselves. the third world would have to surpass the 1st world technologically for it to become a way to feed the hungry.

cows are walking meat factories with immune systems, fluid/food/oxygen systems (blood) and automatic, self repairing machines that contract and extend the muscles and make them stronger and tastier (walking)

cultured meat requires millions of dollars of equipment to produce meat that humans think tastes gross and has to be continuously coddled to keep out bacteria and other germs.

the sci-fi prediction of seaweed and algae farms producing stuff engineered to be made into stuff that tastes like meat, with the texture and nutrients of meat is where the technology should be heading if it really wants to feed the world.

tiny dogs weren't made by scientists, but by dog breeders. when scientists do it, it will be with things like elephants and mammoths :-D

a chihuahua sized raptor should follow soon after.

only lazy people who want to do things like continuing to live don't have their own jet pack. they are pretty easy to build (perhaps with an engineering degree) and easy to fuel (as long as you don't mind your house occasionally burning down). with known fuel parameters (maximum of about 30 seconds of flight). there is even one with a much longer flight time (~9 minutes).

So, no one is gonna mention the slipperiness of the dog genome that allows such a huge variation in dog breeds, without it become a separate species?

YOUR jet pack? How entitled-self-centered-prick of you.

I'm down with the artificially grown meat. But you still need some cows for milk and leather. You wouldn't need as many, obviously, and you could still use the meat, but overall, sounds good.

I still say we need to get this food-air deal figured out, as well as renewable, cheap energy sources, before we do all the deep space travel stuff. Also, there's lots of helium on the moon, but it's just not cost effective to harvest it. That's kinda what that whole movie, Moon, was based around. Y'know? The set up of the plot?

Fat film critic lectures his intellectual betters on his opinion of the progress of science based on science fiction TV shows from the 70's.

Strangely enough, Catholic priests actually have ready-made answers for when people pray to God for selfish desires. "Good things come to those who wait." "God helps those who help themselves." "When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives."

Amusing that religious answers can help scientists deal with the same sort of self-absorbed ignorant masses. If there's one thing scientists and religious people agree on, it's that Objectivists are worthless shits deserved of societal scorn/Satan's Wrath,

Before anyone says anything, I would like to shed some light on the following quotes: "God helps those who help themselves," "Good things come to those who wait," and "When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives."

The first two quotes are "phantom verses," verses that people think are Bible verses, but appear nowhere in the Bible. The first quote seems to undermine the entire concept of being saved by God's grace, but if you look at Wikipedia they mention the same thing.

However, the third quote refers to an actual passage, James 4:3, found here:http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James%204:1-4&version=ESV

The author of the passage is addressed to the believers throughout the Roman world at the time. Specifically, James 4 focuses on a Warning against Worldliness: Selfishness. The book of James is very applicable to this day to Christians worldwide. Although it is shameful that many, who claim to represent the faith, do not follow such teachings. However, I'm the last to throw stones in this matter.

@ Anonymous

If you read this I'd like you check out 1 Peter 3, focus on v.15 and reflect upon it.

Anonymous, we MUST lead by example in all aspects of our lives. We can NOT boast on what we have because the Christian faith teaches that it is by Christ's grace we are saved and it's not by our hands we were saved.

Your comment goes against the teachings of Christ and reflects poorly on believers as a whole. We don't need anymore believers reinforcing the stereotype of the "Self-Entitled-Holier-than-Thou-Sunday-Christian."

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About Me

Bob is a part-time independent filmmaker, part-time amateur film critic and full time Movie Geek. He is heterosexual, a pisces, and a severely lapsed Catholic. He is a tireless enemy of censorship, considers his personal politics "Libertine" and enjoys acting as a full time irritant to overly serious people of ALL political stripes.